Monkey Fossils Suggest Primates Came Out of Asia, Not Africa

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Monkey Fossils Suggest Primates Came Out of Asia, Not Africa

The discovery of four ancient, palm-sized primates in what is now Libya suggests the human family tree's taproot is in the Middle East, not Africa.

The conventional narrative of primate development places the origins of anthropoids – monkeys and apes, including humans – in Africa. Some paleontologists, however, think Asia is the more likely cradle for that ur-primate, or what Christopher Beard has called the "Dawn Monkey."

Beard, a paleontologist at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, is among the co-authors of the paper describing the new primates, published October 28 in Nature. The four species' fossils, representing three distinct taxonomic families, are 40 million years old. Nothing similar was known to have lived in Africa at that time.

The diversity and timing of the new anthropoids raises two scenarios. Anthropoids might simply have emerged in Africa much earlier than thought, and gone undiscovered by modern paleontologists. Or they could have crossed over from Asia, where evidence suggests that anthropoids lived 55 million years ago, flourishing and diversifying in the wide-open ecological niches of an anthropoid-free Africa.

That humans may trace their evolutionary lineage to creatures like the newly discovered anthropoids, which likely weighed between four ounces and one pound and could sit comfortably in your hand, is an intriguing possibility. But other paleontologists warn that more investigation is required.

"These discoveries are exciting and very informative," said Stony Brook University paleoanthropologist William Jungers, who was not involved in the study. But "more than anything else, these discoveries indicate that we still have a lot to learn."